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Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Parts On Hold

We sort of put #SmallEngineParts on hold here for a couple of days while we lived through Hurricane Matthew. Here's how it all went down.

Initially, I'll confess that nobody took the warnings very seriously. Here in Florida, we get warned about pending doom by the weather man and lady quite often. Not often does the Governor of the state grab the mic and say things like, "Beach areas evacuate or it will kill you. Others who stay, prepare to be without power, among other things." It was around that time that orders started pouring in for generator carb kits!

Matthew was a category 4 hurricane when it hit Haiti and bounced onto Cuba. Then we knew two things for real. One, the hurricane was heading right for us; two, it was not fizzling out as they oft do. There may be some planning required. WWTD?

So, it was business as usual on Wednesday, Oct. 5th - we even had a li'l hurricane party in the office at lunch time. So far so good. We love a party. That's why some of HLS staff are going to Tennessee for the Chainsaw GTG December 3rd at Mastermind Worksaws. Then the evacuation notices came for the beach areas up the coast from Miami on up that got the landlord's shorts in a knot. Apparently it was an uncomfortable knot, 'cause we came in to fill everyone's small engine parts orders Thursday morning, and there was crew throwing down sand bags at the warehouse doors and adding some plywood to the exterior wall decor. Alrighty then, no entry. Parts on hold. Sorry.

An email went out to those on our VIP list about the lack of ability to fulfill orders for that day, and possibly Friday and Saturday too. Are you on the list for small engine parts discounts and other advisories? If not, you better click here.

Then it happened. At Zero Dark Thirty on Friday morning Oct. 7th, Hurricane started throwing heavier and heavier debris around town, and knockin' over trees like Paul Bunion's axe had invisibly been swung. Trees went swimming in people's pools (mine in particular),

... and if power was not out already, it was about to go. Many were without power on Thursday.

Thousands of homes and businesses along the coast of Florida were without power and internet for days. Here at HLS, the power was on for us Monday, but no Internet connectivity until today, Oct. 11th - and that only last a couple of hours before Brighthouse failed us some more. How did (do) we fulfill orders without the inter webs? Cell phones! We use our phone bandwidth as "hot spots" to make WIFI available to office and warehouse computers so that we see all of your orders and get 'em shipped. We don't want to keep parts on hold for five days in a row, so we had to resume business as usual. (Almost.)

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